“People worry they might NOT get into a council nursing home. That’s how popular they are. But cutbacks mean every 4th place has disappeared in the last 12 years.”

The Swedish experience of elder care is dramatically different to the Scottish one. The “People’s Home” (Folkhemmet) ideal is that only the highest standards are good enough for the people. Excellent public services are designed to remove the build-up of demand from the rich for separate, private facilities – and this has worked in a society with relatively high taxes and low income differentials. The worry in Sweden today is that cuts will create underfunded Old Folk’s Homes and those council services will lose the middle class – and their support for high quality public services.

Marta Szebehely is a professor of Social Work at Stockholm University. She has been studying care services, social policy and gender perspectives since the mid 1980s.
She says; “Elderly care is not just an expense. We regard kindergarten spending as an investment in the future of society and workforce. We could regard elderly spending the same way because it allows children (especially women) to keep working. No decent formal elder care means women can’t work.”

All of this has huge relevance for Scotland where council-run and some private elder care centres have a poor reputation and the Scottish Parliament is debating how to care for rising numbers of elderly people and cut costs.

The event is free but seats are limited and names must be on the attendance list to guarantee entry due to Parliament security.

Please RSVP Christopher.White@scottish.parliament.uk Please assume you have a seat unless Chris says the meeting is full. Please also check on the Nordic Horizons website (nordichorizons.org) and Facebook page where we will post more information.